Public Health

A new study in mice shows that even short-term consumption of a Western diet rich in saturated fats and fructose is more damaging for healthy liver development than following a high fat diet alone, which provides new insight into the effects of adding fructose to a Western diet high in fat.  Dr. Susanna Iossa, who led the study at the University of Naples, Italy, said, “This result points to the harmful effect of adding fructose to the usual western, high-fat diet and, together with other related findings, should stimulate the discussion on the use of fructose and fructose-containing…

A recent paper found that exposure to air pollution early in life produces harmful changes in the brains of mice, including an enlargement of part of the brain that is seen in humans who have autism and schizophrenia, and that led them to conclude that smog causes autism. Male mice had more changes and the mice also performed poorly in tests of short-term memory, learning ability, and impulsivity. In three sets of experiments, University of Rochester professor of Environmental Medicine Deborah Cory-Slechta and colleagues exposed mice to high levels of air pollution, what a baby would…

If you have read about feminized frogs due to pesticides, or other scary claims by environmentalists, you may wonder why the EPA does not use those studies when registering chemicals. The reason is because they often have no parallel to the real world. Chemical companies, despite claims by their cultural detractors, want to be overly cautious, while anti-science activists want to use enough exposure to create the effect they want to write about. In both cases, they use gavage dosing. Oral gavage refers putting a tube down their throats to deliver substances directly to the stomach. It has…

When you are young, you shape your possibilities. Research in psychology and neuroscience shows us that your personality and your intelligence develop during childhood and teenage years until becoming fully developed by age 25. Likewise, during your younger years, you write the story you tell about yourself – who are you, how do you understand your worth and your potential? Then you live this story through your adult life. In other words, the person you shape while growing up can be the person you’re stuck with. So allowing drugs or alcohol to influence this young person can affect not just…

If you haven't yet read that mothers who lived near farms have more kids with autism, you will. The reason, it is said, is because farms use pesticides. You're not off the hook, organic farmers. The results are from California and there are lots and lots of organic pesticides in use in the study area. The first question should be, how could such a thing happen? I don't ingest pesticides, and neither should you. People don't ordinarily do that, you'd have to really try to do that, unless you live out in the fields. In its coverage of this story, Reuters finds someone to speculate "that the…

For obese people, food is a habit. They associate a movie with chips or cake and a movie is not a movie without the snack. Taken out of their routines, people quickly unlearn such habits. Nothing overturns routine like pregnancy - and that may a great inroad to better health. Results presented this weekend at the joint meeting of the International Society of Endocrinology and the Endocrine Society (ICE/ENDO 2014 in Chicago) found that obese pregnant women who adhere to an intensive nutritional and exercise program starting in the first trimester gained less weight and had fewer…

6,000 years ago, farmers were truly organic - and the diseases that can bring were even more prevalent then. But prehistoric people can be absolved of any guilt, they had no way to know that agricultural irrigation systems could add to their disease burden. Researchers recently found what might be the oldest evidence of man-made technology inadvertently causing disease outbreaks, thanks to the discovery of a schistosomiasis parasite egg in a 6200-year-old grave at a prehistoric town by the Euphrates river in Syria.  The discovery at Tell Zeidan in Syria shows that the parasite…

As of June 5th, there were 24 confirmed casesof dengue fever and 18 cases of chikungunya according to health officials, in the state of Florida. So what are these diseases? Dengue is a  flu-like disease. Interestingly half of allinfected show no symptoms. For the other half however, it causes high fever,rash, muscle and joint pain. Most patients recover in 2-7 days. Chikungunya issimilar to Dengue causing fever, rash and muscle and joint  pain. Fortunately after infection patientsacquire lifelong immunity. So far all cases of these diseases are the result ofpeople traveling to the…

Computed tomography scans are the standard of care for diagnosing heart and lung conditions but there is worry more CT scans could mean a higher lifetime risk of cancer from radiation exposure. A study, of 2,085 patients at nine centers in the U.S. and Middle East, found that using newer generation, dual-source CT scanners significantly reduced radiation exposure for patients when compared with first generation, 64-slice, single-source scanners or first generation, dual-source CT scanners. Patient radiation exposure was reduced by 61 percent with the newer scanners, with no significant…

Every time you see a model or actress on a magazine cover with an article bragging about how she lost her 'baby weight' a month after delivery, you should know it's probably not because she works harder than you or has a nanny. It's because she probably never gained a lot of the baby weight that occurs in the final month of pregnancy. Elective early deliveries have become the latest craze for wealthy people - it isn't just the 1 percent, it is the 4 percent. Labor induction or cesarean delivery without medical reason before a baby is considered full-term at 39 weeks is associated with health…